New Data Proves Why You Need to Segment Your Email Marketing

All great marketers know that email is still one of the most powerful marketing tactics at their disposal, but they also know that it's evolving beyond its newsletter blasting past. In fact, this is the topic of my Science of Email Marketing webinar coming up on June 13th. And as I've been conducting my research for the webinar, two particularly noteworthy trends from the evolution of email marketing have caught my eye: the importance of relevance and segmentation.

The Importance of Relevance

When I conducted a survey about email marketing, I asked respondents to tell me, in a free-form text field, why they chose to subscribe to emails from some companies. One of the most common responses I received was that they expected the emails were going to be relevant to their interests. 38% of respondents specifically referenced the word "relevance," and one especially well-worded response indicated that content should be "particularly and specifically" relevant to them.

The Power of Segmentation

One key way to ensure that your emails are relevant to your recipients is to segment your list so that your email recipients only receive email content that's relevant to their particular needs and interests. And when it comes to segmentation, the possibilities are endless, as you can always get more and more granular with your segmentation criteria. But on a broader level, you can generally segment based on categories such as geography (i.e. where they live), demographic/personal information, interest types (i.e. preferred content subjects or formats), behavior (i.e. how engaged they are with your company/content/brand), or industry/role. So if someone visits your website and downloads an ebook on a particular topic, you could put them on a special list and send them more information about that topic, since you already know it interests them.

The Effect of Segmentation on Click-Through Rates

Furthermore, When I analyzed over 100K emails sent from HubSpot's customer base, I discovered that those with only one list had a lower average click-through rate (7.3%) than those that segmented their overall email database into 2 to 6 lists (8.3%).

The takeaway here is pretty obvious. If you aren't already segmenting your email list to improve the relevancy of your email marketing, you should be. Check out this article on 27 great ways to segment your list for inspiration to help you get started, and give the contacts in your email database what they really want.

I definitely pay more attention to relevant e-mails than generic ones that don't apply to me.

I think Amazon for the most part does a pretty good job at sending relevant marketing e-mails. While they do send some generic ones, they also send ones with product suggestions based on my buying habits. The book ones are often particularly relevant.

Segmenting is not a new concept. It has been around for a while. So I don't understand why so many people ignore it. I separate my lists by having one list for the freebie seekers, one for the low ticket buyers, and one for the high ticket buyers. Why? Because freebie seekers will never buy any high ticket item.

I agree with Jeremy, segmentation is nothing new and essential to conversions. The more targeted your lists are to the topics you are sending out in your newsletter, the better your conversions will be. Thanks for sharing this Dan!

Subscribers are only interested on the topics they are into and not on the topics they are not interested. Obviously, if they receive emails that do not have what they subscribed for they might get irritated and unsubscribe eventually. It's good to know the importance of segmentation and how we will use them effectively.